


and the light shone brighter in the darkness

by elyvilon



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Pre-New 52, doesn't really affect the fic at all though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 22:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14657232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elyvilon/pseuds/elyvilon
Summary: A story of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, all out of order.





	and the light shone brighter in the darkness

**left field**

 

“You're ambidextrous.”

Clark blinks, surprised. “What?”

“You used your left hand.”

They were retiring to their temporary chambers after signing a treaty with an alien planet, all because Diana had been unwittingly flung into one of their space stations, laser beams had been blasted in response. Long story.

“Oh,” Superman looks a little dazed but mostly pleased. “You noticed.”

Batman had no idea what he’d said to warrant this response, as he made it his job to notice things. “Is it a Kryptonian thing?”

“Being ambidextrous? Maybe,” Clark shrugs, “never got around to asking my father,” Jor-El, obviously, he’d never refer to his Pa that way. “I had so many questions.”

“I can imagine,” Bruce says distractedly, thinking of all the times he’d seen Clark hold a pen or stir his coffee or whatnot. He frowns. “Interesting.”

“What?”

“Clark Kent is right-handed; Kal-El is left-handed.”

Superman was grinning wide enough to blind now. So that’s what he was so proud of. “Oh, I just thought, why not use it to help with the whole secret identity thing?”

Bruce makes a noise that’s either impressed or disdainful. “I hate aliens.”

“Because it took months to master writing with your left hand?”

Weeks, actually, and the training wasn’t limited to writing: self-defense, using the grappling hook all over again, the wide array of knives and daggers. He tells Clark all this while stealing a sample of a plant that glowed three different shades. This was why the Watchtower’s greenhouse was growing larger than the trophy room and cafeteria altogether. It wasn’t even a hobby or remotely helpful. He just had an infinite well of curiosity.

“Bruce.”

“What.”

“Sometimes? I feel like you’re the alien.” 

*

**first catch**

 

Bruce didn’t spend a lot of time looking at the Metropolis sky.

Granted, as a full-blooded Gothamite he didn’t have much reason to. Secondly, catching glimpse of the blue expanse was rare in this city of vast, polished skyscrapers. It wasn’t necessarily known for its natural scenery, Metropolis was man-made and took pride in it.

Bruce found himself in one of those rare opportunities where he had a clear view of the sky, and at this time of the day it was like someone had put it in a blender - golds and warm blues and wisps of clouds swirling together. Breathtaking.

Literally breathless, actually, was Bruce Wayne as he plummeted closer to the grey pavement. He tried to work his mind faster than the workings of gravity. No grapple hook. No gargoyles peering over the edges of the quickly passing storeys to grab a hold of - not that it would work anyway.

One last request to Alfred through the earpiece, or perhaps a goodbye. No, a thank you.

In the very reflective windows of Metropolis’ buildings he is just a man falling while wearing a very expensive Italian suit. Not just any man, but he might as well be. More than anything he feels frustration - he should’ve been better equipped for this, he thinks, and he would have done just fine in an assassination attempt. Only there were other people present too, and while not always, in his experience when one’s duty is to save others’ lives they have a tendency to disregard their own. Therefore.

He closes his eyes and opens his mouth to say the words to Alfred, but all that comes out is a sharp noise as arms (arms?) encircle him, and suddenly the world is still moving but he’s no longer falling but not rising either. No, he’d been snatched sideways out of the air like a frisbee. He is both irked and humbled by the thought, then realises he now has to conjure a good reason for why Bruce Wayne so bravely put himself into harm’s way for the lives of others. He looks up at the face of the man who had put him into this situation.

“Superman,” he accuses, but he is still breathless from everything that had just taken place, which dampens the effect.

“I’ve got you, Mr. Wayne,” the man says all reassuring and heroic-like, and yes, Bruce reminds himself, he too has a role to play.

He grasps at the impressive blue-clad biceps and exclaims, as if he's never found himself in situations where he’s been flung straight out of the top story of a building before, “Thank god! I was _literally_ about to die just now!”

He receives a tight smile that says, very observant of you, sir, and Bruce realises he’s going to be set down somewhere safe so the authorities can come pick him up like a child lost at the mall.

“Excuse me,” he says, “there was a man up there you should go after. He thinks his job is done, but you should make sure that he didn’t hurt anyone else, first.”

Now that earns him a different look, if not a little baffled. But Bruce will take this part seriously in exchange for any role.

“Citizens are always my top priority, Mr. Wayne,” which is actually pretty obvious in hindsight, and Bruce realises that even Superman must watch or read the news if he knows his face and name.

His answer, however, gets full marks and an actual smile. “Call me Bruce, Superman."

*

**screen**

 

He had been eight years old when he saw the news on the farm house’s small analog TV, making the boy on the screen seem even smaller, a tiny life. He remained silent as cameras followed, reporters asking persistent questions. Even in his young age Clark had been mortified - knew then that he would never grow to be that type of person. A red-haired adult wearing a badge came into the camera’s view, anger painting his face. 

“Can’t you give the boy some space?” he snarled, but there was not just anger there. “Don’t you know what he’s been through?”

“Commissioner Gordon,” someone said, and the questions were being directed at him now that they couldn’t reach the boy. “Is it true that he was found sitting right next to the bodies, sitting in their blood?”

“Is it true?”

“Commissioner - “

“ - shot right before his eyes?”

“Any suspects - ”

“The inheritance - “

“Bruce Wayne!”

Clark’s heart clenched at the name as the boy was ushered into the police station, sombre, haunted and dry-eyed. But never vacant.

“Madness,” Pa was muttering. “Who would do this?” Ma stood from the couch, hands clutching her apron and moving to the kitchen to distract herself from the terrible news.

“And to such good people,” she said. “Their son’s just about the same age as our boy. Too young, far too young…”

 

Years later when he sees the tabloids hitting the news stands, the handsome smile, then later again the scandals he thinks, _what did you expect?_ All that money and no guidance, none that anyone knew of. He stayed in that too-big mansion with his butler, no distant relatives came to take him in, then eventually he boarded at Gotham’s most elite private school. For a long time things were quiet on his end until there was word that he’d dropped out before graduating, then the shocking disappearance that spanned for years. There’d been discussion about whether he was dead, or kidnapped, or maybe he was in Gotham all along, hidden among the common people.

His return was taken by storm - Gotham’s favourite child once again, and perhaps he’d never stopped being so at all. Bruce Wayne said many things upon his arrival and the screens played his speeches, what he did during his travels and why he’d decided to keep so lowkey. But there was one thing that stood out to Clark the most, for all the emotive language he used in his rambling monologues.

Bruce Wayne’s striking gaze was aimed at the screen, and while words were cheap, Clark knew their value more than most. These words were rich with layers of hidden depth and, perhaps most importantly, the most sincere thing he’d said since his appearance:

_It’s good to be home._

It was a throwaway sentence, easily ignored, and people were already referring to other sections of his speech. But Clark thought of a rainy night when a young boy was surrounded by similar reporters, remembered intense eyes that were ever present but did not meet the crowd, and even now, Bruce Wayne was not wholly there. There was something inside him ( _was it in his eyes, the way he carried himself? Or was it something so subtle that only Clark could ever pick it up?_ ) that remained untouched by the public, something that belonged only to himself. A secret, or a burden, or a wry inner joke.

It was enough, somehow, and Clark turns his face from the screen and continues on with his double life. 

*

Superman will consider, in the future, that what was hidden so expertly was the secret of the Bat. Eventually he will realise how wrong he was, that even what seems so strong and elusive can be broken, desecrated, _replaced._

The costume and symbol could never be the astonishing, burning thing that was Bruce Wayne’s soul.

*

**_‘though i am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.’_ **

 

Wayne Manor is painted in sepia. Bronzes and dusty browns to mahogany, light filtering always somehow weakly through intricate curtain patterns, giving the atmosphere an otherworldly, ancient glow. Clark supposes the manor _is_ old, definitely felt it at night when it seemed no longer painted in faint tones, but washed in colours that bled deep, felt it in the way its shadows were haunted with memories and the darker things of Bruce’s life. If Clark’s Fortress was a living thing the Manor was stagnant, hadn’t moved on from a time long passed. He understands why Bruce spends more time in the Cave than up here, or maybe, just _maybe_ his friend stayed so constantly below so that his home - his parents’ home - remained unchanged. A time he could think back to, walk into, which had not been tainted by the Bat.

Presently his companion stands by the large window where they have a clear view of the gardens, and Clark learns another palette of Bruce’s life. _And it is not the flowers_ , he thinks as he gazes at the moon-washed skin, hair that is both glowing yet wispy darkness. Eyes cast pale gaze towards him, seeming to absorb him the same way is being done to himself. Clark will always wonder what those discerning eyes see when directed at him, even from back then, from their very first interactions - before they even _knew_ who the other was.

“This room has my favourite view,” the other man says, not once pulling apart their locked gazes. “Tell me, what do you think?”

“It’s something else,” he says by default, and he knows Bruce knows there’s more, will always pick things apart by nature. “The room… everything… it’s nothing like what I grew up with.” The farmhouse, old in a different way, Clark never seemed to notice that it was falling apart. A home full of sounds - quiet sounds, the loudness of every day - full of _life._ A home that was used and loved to pieces.

A childhood recalled by brushstrokes of sunlight.

Bruce’s hands are rough, have broken bone before, grappled onto life. A thumb traces beneath the frame of one of Clark’s lenses, ghosts across his lips. The impossible man whispers,

 

_it’s time to paint this place with new memories,_

 

and Wayne Manor is vibrant once again.

*

**_‘...i know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.’_ **

 

“It doesn’t hurt to heal slowly,” Clark says, “not when I'm somewhere safe.”

“It does hurt. You’re hurt.”

That earns Bruce a shake of the head, a small smile. “That’s not what I meant.” The last vestiges of sunlight have faded into the faint twinkling of stars, and this time Clark will not chase it.

“When I was young I’d stay up looking at the stars,” Clark says, lost in a time and place that had given him unlimited starlight, constellations he had taken for granted. “When my powers first started showing, I thought I might find answers up there.”

They remain silent for a moment, Bruce carding fingers through Kryptonian hair, hadn't quite yet found a texture resembling it.

“You know,” he says so quietly that Clark has to use his super-hearing, “When I was a boy, I was jealous of the Little Prince, watching all those sunsets in one day.” He takes a hand in his own, pressing the pads of his fingers to Clark’s like a reflection, a tiny gesture that felt incredibly intimate. “I’ve finally found someone who can, and here he is, stargazing with me.”

**Author's Note:**

> the opening quotes in the last two parts are from Van Gogh's letters.


End file.
